Problem
1. /dev/parport0 is not found by sane unless you reset permissions after each boot
2. hplip udev rules only seem to support usb devices.
3. there are no/dev/parport[0-9] rules in udev/rules.d anymore
4. Did I read something about these ports being handled by HAL ACLs? If so, how do you do it?

Yes, I could do that. Is that the "recommended" approach though - from a security perspective?
Also, I still wonder why the parport rules disappeared in udev/rules.d since Fedora 8 - usually changes are done for a reason - well ... at least sometimes thanks.

Well, you could create your own udev rule for the device paraport and set the permissions to 666 with that, but it just seems much easier to add the user(s) to the associated group. It's what I do for user access to I/O ports such as /dev/ttyUSB0 and /dev/ttyS0, which are associated with the "dialout" group.

Back in F8 I used to modify one of the existing udev rules and set permissions to 666 for one of the above. But as you've noted, many of those rules are now absent in later releases of Fedora. I now just add myself to the dialout group for user access and am done with it.